Thomas Wayne is Proud of His Son

[shakalooloo]

Lots of good stuff in 'Infinite Frontier', from the return of the JSA, Alan Scott and Obsidian kicking ass together, Roy Harper looking for his daughter and a man with invisible poison skin, but here's some stuff from issue 4, where Thomas Wayne gets to regret being written by Tom King. Also, a sudden yet inevitable betrayal.

Comments

[thanekos]

Be fair, be fair - a character being written by Tom King is only a bad thing if you think the writer who handles the character in question after him shouldn't have to do any significant work in moving the character from where the previous writer left them to where the current writer wants them to be.

[deh_tommy]

I mean, there’s character development and then there’s character assassination.

[aperturedreams]

I'm not complaining since they were all poor developments in the first place, but DC are really falling over themselves to undo any character work Tom King did as soon as he's off that character.

[shakalooloo]

He's the new Grant Morrison!

[coldfury]

Tom King is so interesting, in that he's decided (and apparently editorial agrees) that big stories that transform long standing characters are the way to make big waves in comics.

But unlike others who do similar things, he does it in ways that leave the characters almost unusable.

I mean, who wants to read "Adam Strange -- War Criminal" after Tom King is gone? Vision - Unhinged Robot Man. Mr. Miracle - I can't make a tagline here because I still don't understand what happened in that book.

Even Batman / Catwoman is teetering into that territory. It did all that work to establish Catwoman as the love of Batman's life and then.. tossed it in the bin halfway through the story arc.

In some ways its commendable, because part of the problem with comics is that they never change. But in some ways its worse, because even more so than killing a character, the amount of work that has to go into salvaging a Tom King character is gigantic. (Wally West, anyone?)

He really should be relegated to elseworlds, or just to small characters that DC is OK with writing off for quite a long time.

[aperturedreams]

You summed up the Tom King situation very well! He had so much potential with his early Batman, Grayson, and some of his other work but everything since Heroes in Crisis has ranged from Good to completely aggravating, with Heroes in Crisis obviously falling in the latter camp. And he gets Supergirl and just goes and ahead and kills Krypto in Issue 1? Yikes

[lucean]

Excellent summary of a lot of issues with King. I'd add to that that the run that essentially got King Batman, Grayson, wasn't that. It was actually the opposite of it of what he originally showed he would do with one of the more bigger characters.

I'd also claim that the Batman stuff was even more baffling than that, even if we stick just to Catwoman. The problem wasn't that Catwoman was portrayed as the love of Batman's life, there's a writer who comes up every five to eight years who tries that, but that the book had no attempts at explaining why that would be or really establishing larger relationship dynamics. Instead what we got was how Selina was the perfect woman and Bruce was a loser who was lucky to have a chance with her. Then in the larger storyline it was this miserable hammering home how pathetic Batman was before suddenly pulling out of nowhere that he had figured everything out somehow. Then it all ends with Batman deciding he can actually be happy and settling in for a great life with Selina.

Now the big problem with all of that isn't even that King drastically changed Batman, but that he left the character in a space without anything other writers could really work with within that space. Which becomes a huge issue as other writers probably didn't come want to come and write a happy Batman as that's not the character Bruce is, so without that help from King there's almost nothing to do.

By the way, just as a last note on Bruce/Selijna, it's kind of funny how it already feels like it is on life support. Which wasn't at all surprising when editorial decided to make this decision as we've had attempts at this level of commitment before, but the issue has always been that it legitimately seems like a majority of Batman writers just don't care at all about that relationship.

[thanekos]

You're talking like " usability " is some objective judgement, and not a subjective one that reflects how much a writer (or reader) is willing to engage with someone else's idea of the character being discussed.

" ..the amount of work that has to go into salvaging a Tom King character is gigantic. " isn't an indictment of the kind of changes King makes - it's an indictment of the kind of writer/reader who can't engage with developments they don't agree with, developments in something they've got some kind of investment in, without annulling the development like they want to annul the effect that it had on them as well.

You're suggesting that a long-running shared universe should be written to please that sort of person and how they look at the world - which is a great way to get stories of exactly that quality.

[laughing_tree]

On top of everything you said, the notion that the Vision or Batman were left unusable will probably come as a surprise to Marvel and DC's writers, who went on using them without a hitch. There are like half a dozen Batman books at any given point, and the Vision kept on being a regular part of the Avengers books both during and after the King/Walta series, without so much as a hiccup.

[deh_tommy]

Normally I’d agree with you, but I’d argue in this case that what Tom King did wasn’t really adding or developing anything so much as taking away. There’s a reason DC doesn’t really use Doctor Light anymore post-Identity Crisis or why Joker immunity is so widely mocked.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

I'd argue that, for better or worse, there actually is a certain degree of objective judgement in the idea of "usability" -- or, perhaps more accurately, something which comes close to "objective" as possible when discussing any creative artistic pursuit -- when it comes to long-running shared universes like mainstream superhero comics, simply because it is a shared universe. It's not solely one person's property to do with as they and they alone please, damn the consequences, it's a shared entity that will be passed on to different creators with different ideas and which is being communicated to an audience which, for better or worse, has certain expectations regarding the universe and its characters. Any lasting changes or developments will therefore by necessity be those which achieve some kind of shared consensus with regards to their value and how much they facilitate continued stories using these characters. Those which allow other people to keep reading and creating stories once the latest creative team are finished are "usable", those which don't, aren't. And, much as I kind of dig what Tom King does, there's little denying that his work can be divisive and that he tends to blow up the characters he uses in ways that leave other creators to pick up the pieces if they want to use them as well. His work has creative merit, but it's arguably not always best-suited for the restraints of a long-running shared universe.

Now, maybe this doesn't necessarily always lead to works of exciting and innovative artistic genius and merit, but it also kind of is what it is when it comes to the Marvel and DC Comics universes. Frankly, if you're looking for genuinely radical and groundbreaking storytelling that engages in bold and fearless deconstruction and subversion of expectations in order to utterly upend the story in a lasting and permanent fashion, then you're probably only going to find it very infrequently within a corporate mainstream superhero universe.

[tinygaylaura]

Thank god

[aperturedreams]

No argument here! I hope someone brings back Krypto as soon as he's off Supergirl...

[scorntx]

Asking as someone who wasn't there at the time, but was Fate that bad?
Because that whole period seems to get a bad rep, either with his pretty sudden death in JSA, just strongly ignored altogether or, as seems to be the case here, a bad guy.

Slightly similar befuddlement with Magog, but less so (since with him it's more "okay, fair dos.")

[bruinsfan]

It was. That character was basically what you'd get if the 90s were a person, comics-wise.

[numeronone]

As an agent of balance between chaos and order, surely he'd be most in favour of keeping crossovers from happening and making sure each world is contained...

[cygnia]

Man, why they gotta shit on Lady Quark again and again?

[scorntx]

While we're here, what did Captain Carrot do that was so heinous?

[icon_uk]

Being whimsical beyond 1989?

[scorntx]

Sounds right.

[tinygaylaura]

Arrested for Whimsy Crimes

[shakalooloo]

She and Superwoman use the same costume designer.

[scorntx]

At least most of Superwoman's costumes look like a costume, if one made on the quick.
Lady Quark... not so much.

[icon_uk]

Not really seeing it.

Lady Quark has always worn the same outfit since the 1980's when she was designed by George Perez: Basically a long sleeved leotard which is patterned with the kirby krackle plasma energy that's burning through her.

Superwoman wears much more of a costume, with cape and accessories.

[shakalooloo]

The 'off both shoulders' look. The 'looks naked if only pictured from here on up' look.

[tinygaylaura]

Of course the character who is an expy of Tony Stark would be the one to start a superhero civil war by being an asshole

He just can't help himself in any universe

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I was wondering who that was.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I feel like that word has a new connotation that brings with it a whole new set of expectations for how it's used, and this ain't it.